


i just wanted you to know that this is me trying

by StudioCapsicum



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, canon compliant death, post ep 103, they finally talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25502443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioCapsicum/pseuds/StudioCapsicum
Summary: Jester knows that she can rely on Caleb to listen. So she talks. She doesn't know how badly she needs to talk until she starts, and she doesn't realise how much she has to hear until he replies. It's hard when he's the man trained in deception and she is the woman who can read anyone.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 14
Kudos: 108





	i just wanted you to know that this is me trying

She sought him out this time. Usually it was the other way around. He was writing in one of his journals, runic symbols that she didn’t recognise also drawn in the dirt beneath his fingers. Dirt under his nails, a smudge on his cheek where he must have absentmindedly scratched an itch. Maybe he wasn’t so unlike the man she met so long ago. Odd, because he seemed so different to her now. 

‘Are you busy?’ She asked, her voice breaking the rhythmic sounds of waves crashing against the cliff below, the sting of salt in the air. 

She watched his eyes meet hers and his head quietly shaking, ‘no, I’m not busy’. She even watched him try to suppress a smile. 

She walked closer to the cliff's edge, her feet trailing a little as she scuffed her shoes in the dirt. The light being cast off of the endless expanse of water hurt her eyes a little, but she squinted through the pain. She imagined telling the little girl who’d been dancing around her room in Caleb’s spell earlier, that one day, she would see all of this at once. She’d smell the ocean up close, be able to taste the salt water. Feel the wind in her hair. She wouldn’t need to draw the picture because it would be right in front of her. That child would’ve enjoyed the story but she’s not sure she would’ve believed it. 

But there’s more pressing concerns. 

There’s a long pause, his eyes burning holes into the back of her head. Waiting for her to talk. That’s what she came here to do. Right? Maybe she didn’t, maybe what she wanted was to get away from everything. All the expectations, all the answers people kept giving her. The answers that made the solution look too easy. But the solution to a complex problem can’t be easy. It wouldn’t be right. 

She didn’t hear his footsteps as he approached her, leaving his book wide open in the dirt. His legs ached as he walked forwards after so many hours sitting still. 

‘It’s terrifying.’ He interrupted her train of thought, ‘That there’s so much out there. When we’re in the middle of Wildemount at least we know what’s around us, more or less. Maybe it is because I am not from the coast, but, I prefer when I know what is around me.’

Leaning her head back, her eyes took in the expanse of the blue she knew. The blue she could see from any window. A few white wispy clouds that felt familiar. 

‘You’ve offered a few times, to m- to all of us, but if you ever need anyone to talk to, about it, we’re here for you.’ Caleb, instead, stared at the bottom of the cliffs. At the white spray that roiled and foamed and punished the cliffs trying to keep it in its place. 

‘You are though. You are here for me. This island-’, she paused after every phrase, trying to parse her way through the sentence, trying to find the right structures for words she didn’t know how to order. ‘This island feels like punishment for something I never did wrong.’ 

Tears fell from her eyes, unbidden. Caleb kept his eyes on the water but she could tell he knew. 

‘Every time I try to sleep I think about what would happen if all of us lost our memories. If I left my momma’s house,’ Her voice got more uneven the more she tried to control it, ‘to explore the world with my best friend, and he got sick of me and tried to leave me here. What if I left one place I thought I couldn’t leave and got stuck in another? And why can I only think about myself when I brought six of my friends with me?’ 

Caleb could feel her shoulders shaking and could see her struggling to breathe and could see that after all this time she was breaking. There was no magic he could use to fix this. 

‘I’m not here because of you, Jester.’ He let out a shaky breath as he tried to stay strong for her. But he was never a very strong person. ‘I’m here with you.’ Sometimes he wished the waves would stop for a moment, that there was a break. But they continued to crash. 

‘I do not want to see you in a room you want to get out of, or in chains, or in a little ruby prison, or on an island you can’t escape. You’re uncontainable.’ He finally raised his eyes to look at the wispy clouds that floated past through the expansive sky. ‘Nothing has contained you for long so far, this island will be no different.’

She didn’t know how to reply, instead, she glanced at his face and saw the sky reflected in his eyes. 

‘Anytime you need, Jester. I can get you home. I’ll keep it prepared for you, anytime you want, I promise.’ 

Those words felt warm when he said them. ‘I promise.’ Words that earlier had left her feeling cold and alone.

‘Thank you Caleb.’ Her words carried on the breeze that ruffled his hair, that dried her tears, that whisked the clouds further away. 

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. She wanted to interrupt with, ‘you did though. You listened. The others give me answers that I don’t know what to do with.’ But she did appreciate those answers, they just made her heart beat too fast and her palms get sweaty and her breath get hard to control because they’re answers she didn't know how to respond to. 

Instead, she wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her dress, ‘What were you writing about? When I interrupted.’

‘You didn’t interrupt.’ He looked behind them, seeing at the book laying in the dirt, and grimaced.

‘I was writing about my parents. About the things I don’t want to forget’. 

That he was their murderer. 

‘About the stories they told me.’

Like the story about the boy who would save them. Who they’d relied on for their future and instead ripped it away. 

‘And the sounds of their laughter,’

And their screaming. 

‘They sound wonderful, Caleb. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet them.’

His heart ached with the words he’d left unsaid. He wondered if he could ever tell her, if he could ever ruin the image of himself in her mind. But the fact that he still existed as a good man in her mind was so much more than he deserved. And it was unfair that he took that from her. The words he’d said so long ago haunt him now, ‘I’m glad you see the good in me.’

He didn’t deserve to be thought of so kindly. His jaw ached from tensing it to make sure he didn’t say anything he couldn’t take back. 

‘They would have loved you,’ he said instead of saying that he was sorry. That he’d lied to her because he didn’t want her to know there hadn’t been any good in him for a long time. That he’d lied because he didn’t know if he could recover from another broken heart when she realised that he wasn’t the man she thought he was. 

‘Will you tell me about them?’ 

‘I don’t know how.’

She paused, hearing the distant sounds of Beau and Veth laughing, unafraid of the danger she’d put them in. 

‘Write me a story about them,’ she offered, smiling for the first time. ‘You read a lot of stories, why don’t you write me one?’ 

He didn’t bother fighting with himself because he knew he could never say no to her. ‘Ja, okay.’ He didn’t say that it was going to be a sad story, that he might not be strong enough to get through it. But maybe he’d wake up tomorrow and forget everything, maybe he’d forget being in love with her, so the pain of her disappointment wouldn’t hurt so bad. Maybe. 

She squeezed his hand and whispered her thanks as she walked away, and he stayed, eyes fixed on the bottom of the cliff, wondering how hard a wave would have to hit in order for the cliff to crack and break apart. 

It felt like he’d been hit pretty hard, while the cloud above him had floated out of sight.

* * *

  
  


She woke up the next morning with a letter tucked into her hand. As soon as she checked over her memories and made sure she remembered her Momma she quietly stood up, and walked to the barely smouldering campfire Yasha had set up the night before so Cad could brew his tea the way he preferred. 

She liked the way the smoke stuck to their skin and had made the dome smell like campfire all night. 

She made sure everyone else was sleeping before she opened the letter, Sprinkle sitting in her lap, still half asleep as she began to read. 

_Dear Jester, I’m sorry I didn’t give you this story earlier. I didn’t know how to tell it but I think I finally found the words._

_I was once a young man, eyes warm and wide as I grew into a man. I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to travel and meet people and have just enough money to buy gifts for those I loved. I like to think I achieved some of those things._

_I met a woman who somehow thought I was worth her time. She trusted me, she sought me out. Even when I came home crying about the things I’d done, when I woke up in the night and screamed because of what I’d seen, she was there. See, she’d lived a life too._

_You could see it in her eyes when she was looking at the stars, how she had hoped for more, hoped for something better. You could hear it when she sang quietly to herself, that she had been through so much and that she knew she deserved more than she’d been given._

_But all of that resentment of her history disappeared the day Bren was born. He came into this world with her firey red hair and my eyes and neither of us could have been happier. Until I was called to the military the next day._

_I came back, every time. I was only ever gone for a week and I always brought presents home. I brought back a kitten once and I never saw Bren smile wider, and I watched Una’s face light up every time that cat walked into the room. That’s all I’d ever wanted._

_Now that I was an older man, I realised I didn’t care about travelling or meeting new people, I had the only people I ever wanted to meet with me when I was home._

_And then my boy got chosen for the Academy and he had to leave like I once did and I cried every time he left but I was so proud, so I hid my tears and made sure he knew we loved him. I took up farming and stayed with my wife and we lived a life together and told stories and she would bake fresh bread while I worked in the fields and our life was simple. But it was perfect._

_Then when our son would come home we’d invite his friends and we’d sit and have wine and talk about what we’d missed because he’d grown into a man since the last time we saw him and we were still the same. We found out he had a girlfriend and I couldn’t stop smiling because she was beautiful and powerful and he’d grown into such a perfect young man. He was bright and confident and everything I’d ever wanted for him._

_But then I woke in the middle of the night and smiled at my beautiful Una, who’d given me everything I wanted in my life and I went to the chair next to the window and stared at the night sky. I said a prayer to Pelor and told him to watch over my son, because he’d just left again that day and I missed him already. He’d been cold in his last hug but hadn’t told me why. I pet the cat as we heard something shift outside the front door and watched as a small ball of bright orange light grew closer and closer. There was a silhouette in the distance who reminded me of my son with his perfect posture and his neatly trimmed hair and his uniform that never had a single crease._

_Maybe it was Pelor coming to my prayer and bringing my boy home for me._

_Then the heat hit and I heard my beautiful wife scream and I picked her up and tried to get to the door. But the handle burnt my hand and this time I screamed because the door wasn’t opening no matter how hard I pushed. Then I looked down and my wife wasn’t breathing in my arms and I fell to my knees. If she was gone, it wasn’t worth saving myself. So I kneeled with her in my arms and the cat had disappeared and I cried and my last thought was that I hoped Bren knew we loved him._

  
  


_He does know you loved him and he’s sorry because he can never redeem himself or make it right. He’s sorry because he’d rather forget you sometimes, even though you gave him everything. He’s sorry that he’s a murderer because at one point, he wanted to be one, and now the idea makes him sick._

* * *

  
  


Jester found him, eventually. Even though he didn’t want to be found. He didn’t want to be seen or looked at or talked to. He didn’t want to see pity in her eyes. He didn’t want to have this conversation at all. 

‘Thank you, Caleb. For writing that.’ She’d thought about what she’d wanted to say to him but all the words in her head disappeared when she saw him. He was sitting on a log, gently tracing the small scars on his arms. 

‘Ja, well I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you that story to your face.’ 

She sat next to him and tried not to notice when he shrunk away from her. 

‘I thought I knew how the world worked, back inside Momma’s house. I thought men on noble steeds whisked away women in distress. I thought that’s what romance was. I thought good people were powerful and helped those who needed it.’ She reached across and traced one of his scars, his muscles tensing under her fingers. 

‘But everything is a lot more grey than I read about in my books. I didn’t know that sometimes the good guys lose, and that sometimes the person you trust and rely on the most is hurting and you don’t know how to help.’ 

‘I don’t think what I did was grey. I don’t think my parents would either.’ He tried to shift his arms away but she caught his wrist lightly and pulled his hand into hers. It was so much more than he deserved. 

‘You told me a story about parents who loved their child more than anything in the world. You don’t need to worry about them being proud, or them forgiving you.’ 

She heard him suck in some air and let it out shakily, his breath warm against their clasped hands. ‘You came to me yesterday and cried and needed help and I couldn’t give you answers. Instead, I gave you my trauma and put more weight on your shoulders. You deserve so much more than me as your friend. I’m sorry.’ 

His eyes squeezed shut because he couldn’t bear to look at her as she rested her hand on his jaw and wiped away a tear. But it sounded like she was smiling when she spoke. 

‘Yesterday you gave me a friend who listened. You gave me more than you know because I’ve never had that before you. You’re a good friend Caleb. I promise.’ 

‘Ja okay,’ he exhaled after a pause. He wasn’t sure he’d ever believe that but her hand was so soft on his jaw and he was still selfish. So he lied to her again. ‘Okay.’

He was the man trained in deception and she was the woman who could read anyone. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this one! I just started typing and this came out so I hope you liked it <3 I was listening to folklore and got emotional so this is what happened.


End file.
